


Once Upon A Dream (A Reworking of Sleeping Beauty)

by lost_spook



Category: Sleeping Beauty (Fairy Tale)
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-04
Updated: 2009-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:08:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In my day," said the King, "all we needed were twenty mattresses and a dried pea."  On the nature of fairies and fairy tales.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon A Dream (A Reworking of Sleeping Beauty)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for bookesque

_She dreamed._

_She dreamed she was awake and couldn't move. She had dreamt that so often she could almost understand that it was a dream, but she still couldn't move and she could not wake._

*

Ferrand dreamed, too.

He dreamed of following a shimmering, near-translucent fairy up a long winding staircase to a room where a beautiful girl was lying asleep.

The difference was, he could wake up from _his_ nightmare.

It wasn't much comfort, though, because he knew that it must mean something. He'd dreamt the same thing for the last fifty nights in a row and the dream was starting to get more detailed, even to directions as to which road he should take to find the castle with the tall tower and the sleeping girl.

Well, he wouldn't. He refused. Until they made him.

And then there was the other dream that went with it, where he followed the same pattern: he'd climb up the stairs to the room where the princess was lying (clearly, she had to be a princess. Only princesses had long, golden hair of that shade, or got enchanted and locked in towers) only to find that the castle was crumbling around him and he was falling into darkness. The whole thing was a trap.

The worst of it was, before these, there had been the Girl and now there never was.

No, that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was, if he told his parents, his father would be so excited, he'd have him on his horse and in search of the lost castle and princess before anyone could so much as say happy ever after.

He sighed and watched the watery, early spring sunshine fill the room.

*

_There had always been fairies, as long as she could remember. They sang her to sleep, long ago, before one of them finally put her to sleep for good. They had given her empty gifts and raised her in the safety of isolation._

_She was still dreaming, but the tears were real._

*

"Ferrand," said his father. He was attempting a stern, royal look. It was something he carried off well, being a tall, dark and distinguished looking man whose hair was greying at the temples and he knew how to wear a crown, which he should, after all these years of his wife instructing him in the art. The likeness between the two was apparent in more ways than one.

His son attempted to head him off. "Ah, Father. I was wanting to talk to you. The south wall is in dire need of repair. Shall I send for the stone masons?"

"I didn't summon you here to discuss walls. Although if what you say is true, then yes. Mind, I won't have any truck with dwarfs trying to strike odd bargains, though."

He nodded. "Of course. I shall get that seen to at once, then. Pray excuse me, Father."

"Ferrand!" he bawled.

He sighed and cancelled his plan to make a hasty exit through the heavy door behind him. His father would only come after and shout.

"I wanted to talk to you about finding a bride. It really is about time, don't you think?"

Ferrand folded his arms. "It's hardly that simple."

At that point, his mother entered and surveyed them both. She was a pale woman with sleek, dark hair (that strangely never greyed, but Ferrand knew better than to enquire about that) that contrasted with light blue eyes. There was not the slightest wrinkle or stain on her blue velvet gown as she took her throne next to her husband with a precise movement.

"Audric, not again," she said. "I am sure something will happen for Ferrand soon, if you will only leave the issue alone. After all, we thought we should never be rid of Adeline but once she met that frog, nothing would do but for her to marry him as soon as possible."

He hated this. The people at the castle gate could look for a friend and a lover. He had to wait for a frog.

"Yes, but he's not trying," complained the King. "When I was young I know I was a sad trial to my parents, but you can hardly say that I didn't make the effort."

Ferrand said, "If you would like me to pack my bags and wander off round the world sneering at every princess I meet, I'm sure I could oblige. That is what you did, isn't it?"

"I did not sneer," said the king. "That would have been most ungentlemanly. I merely failed to find what I was looking for until your mother knocked on the castle door on that stormy night."

He started looking sentimental at the memory. Ferrand exchanged a look with his mother, who still found it hard to forgive her late mother-in-law the incident with the pea.

"So you see," said Ferrand swiftly, "all that is needed, clearly, is for me to take care of the south wall and wait for the right girl to turn up."

The King frowned at him. "You don't seem to understand. It's traditional. King Faramond's son had a grand ball only recently. Seemed to do the trick nicely."

"We have balls. We had one the other week and it's always the same people. Besides, a good number of the female guests I tend to call Aunty -."

He glared at his son, who was being every bit as awkward as he had been in his day. "Yes, but this fellow - his son found a charming girl, who'd been forced to work as a servant. And if you won`t have a ball, you could at least go out riding and see if you can't chance across some girl who can sing."

"Father, if you are so desperate to see me married, simply arrange something with someone for me."

The king ignored him. That was not how it worked here. You got married because you heard a girl singing or dropped a ball down a well or befriended a bear. You didn't marry for political reasons or love at thirty-first sight. It drove Ferrand up the wall.

"You could try going out and being rude to a hideous old hag or an apparently harmless peddler," his father continued. "You may not recall it now, but your eldest sister's husband -."

He cut in, before they had that tale again. "Father, I refuse to go round insulting old beggars and I am not going to marry a frog. May I leave now?

*

King Audric sighed. "It was so much simpler in our day," he said to his wife. "All you needed were twenty mattresses and a dried pea."

And, even though he'd forgotten not to mention the pea, his wife kissed him. "I'm sure a story will catch up with Ferrand soon enough. After all, he takes after his father in more than one respect and he is certainly a handsome young prince. Had he not been, we may have had some difficulty, since there is no precedent for that sort of thing."

*

"Is it too much to ask that I don't marry a frog or get myself turned into a bear?" demanded Ferrand of Alain the Fool, whom he considered to be the wisest man in the kingdom. "Can they not leave me alone? Oh, no, it's why can't you stop hanging around here and go slay a dragon?"

Alain considered this. "I don't believe any dragons have been seen for over a hundred years, sire. You could deal with that irritating lizard thing the cook likes to keep as a pet, but I fear that would lose you a cook rather than gain you a bride."

"I don't want one," he snapped and then coloured, because he could scarcely explain about the dreams. It would have been all very well if there had only been the Girl, but that was no longer the case. "I daresay you think I'm unreasonable."

The jester smiled to himself. "I'd say you can hardly expect not to be a particular young man when you're the son of a man who couldn't find one princess in a hundred to please him and a woman who is so sensitive that -."

"Best not to mention that," said Ferrand. "She also has very acute hearing."

He acknowledged that with a wry lift of his eyebrows. "I should warn you that she has been interviewing all of the servant girls these last few days."

"Not another case of lost laundry?" enquired her son. "My father's spymaster has nothing on my mother on the trail of a missing shift."

Alain laughed at him. "I believe the questions centred around lumpy mattresses and the subjects of their feelings towards animals."

"Animals?"

He grinned at him. "Oh, dead horses they can't bear to part with, wild swans -."

"I'm not much of an animal person," said Ferrand, his expression darkening. Must they all interfere?

*

_The fairies meant well, but they didn't understand. Even the kindest of them was as cold as ice besides the hardest-hearted of humans. They had no concept of the difference between what was wanted and what was needed, so their help was erratic at best._

_Oh, but that wasn't entirely true. Some of them did not mean well at all. There was a fairy who haunted her dreams even now, turned everything back into darkness and promised her that she would die._

_She wished she could._

*

The Girl had not been a princess at all, or at least, he found it hard to believe that she could have been. Not like the conventional beauty in the dream, with her flawless face and golden hair. The Girl had seemed real, even if it had only been in his head, and she had laughed at him with dancing dark eyes, especially when he tried to stand on his dignity as a prince. He should have been insulted, but that was hard to manage in the face of her infectious humour.

He should have asked her name, but then it had only ever been a dream and he hadn't thought of that. Besides, she had probably been up a tree by then.

*

_She'd been returned home, to the castle and the town around it, after sixteen years in the forest and she'd run into the evil fairy before she even had a chance to meet her mother and her father._

_She dreamed of that, over and over. Sitting in the round room and wondering what they would think of her. The fairies had wanted to cast a glamour over her, since she was hardly beautiful in the way that they believed a princess should be. Maybe it was as well she had never met them. They might have been disappointed._

_Then she had found herself standing without knowing why and moving towards the staircase outside the room. The air had thickened, she could almost feel it close about her, sweet and cloying, like poison and there was nothing she could do, even though she silently asked herself where she was going and why._

_She reached the topmost room of the tower and entered it, still drawn there helplessly. An elderly woman, who was sitting by a spinning wheel, smiled at her, but she only felt a sliver of coldness that nearly cut through the spell, if only for an instant. She was a fairy. She had not lived this long with fairies not to be able to recognise one at a glance._

_Sapphire eyes caught her in their gaze and when she asked her to reach out and touch the spindle, she did as she was told, as if in a dream._

_Then she fell into darkness and it was a long, long time before she stopped falling. She wasn't sure she ever had._

*

Ferrand rode a mile down the road that was beckoning him and then he rode all the way back again.

The trouble was, it all came down to the question of which of them was real. Of course, it was only to be expected that something magical would happen to a prince of his description - his parents were impatient, waiting for it to come about - but now he had three visions to guide him and they all contradicted each other.

It was unfair. Adeline had grumbled about the frog to begin with, but it had been clear that this was her story and Father had put his foot down - and she had stopped complaining once he abruptly turned into a blond prince named Hieron in the middle of the night. Their mother had been a little shocked at that, but it had all ended well enough. There hadn't been two frogs and a bear to choose between.

Did he ignore the whole thing; trust the dream that warned him of a trap? It could be, he reasoned.

On the other hand, maybe there really was some poor princess (who could hardly help her perfect looks) who was doomed to sleep out all eternity because he couldn't face up to his destiny. And maybe he shouldn't worry about his lack of attraction to the stranger, because everyone else seemed happy enough with their unlikely endings. Maybe it came with the story.

No, he supposed that he'd have given in before this and gone off to find the castle and rescue the wretched woman, if it weren't for the Girl.

Meeting someone in a dream was about as idiotic as the rest of it, and he was sure they'd have understood if he'd confessed that and even let him ride off in search of her, although since those dreams were lacking the helpful directions of the other, he'd have been left looking up trees for the rest of his life.

He frowned. He could still tell them that, but it'd mean ignoring the other dreams for the rest of his life and he could easily see a future in which he became Mad King Ferrand, who'd driven himself crazy looking for a girl who didn't exist.

He decided he would have to tell someone.

*

_There had been a human nurse, she remembered that, but only vaguely. Fairies didn't know what to do with a screaming baby. They needed someone sensible and real for that. She had a feeling that they'd spent a lot of time watching the practical nurse (who didn't stand for nonsense and talked in well-worn folk sayings) with the same sort of fascination that humans would reserve for a captured dragon._

_She recalled crying her heart out when they`d sent the nurse away, but it hadn't all been terrible. Fairies danced and played and they laughed, even though she knew only too well that they couldn't be said to have a sense of humour._

_The only person who she'd met who didn't look at her as if she was a performing monkey when she tried to tell jokes, or fell over, dropped things and tore her dress while climbing a tree was the prince who had somehow crept into her dreams lately._

_It would have been nice if he had been real, but in her life there were only ever fairies of one sort or another._

*

"I want to marry a girl out of a dream," said Ferrand. "Do you think I've lost my mind?"

The Fool said, "As we've mentioned, your youngest sister married a frog she found in the garden pond. Your oldest sister married a bear and nearly couldn't keep him. I'm not sure what could be stranger."

"That isn't comforting," he said in return. "That only means that insanity runs in the family, which is hardly surprising."

Alain motioned for him to sit on a chair in the Fool's spartan tower room. "I should mention that your father has indeed been spending a great deal of time talking to frogs lately, so perhaps your theory is correct."

 _No_ , thought Ferrand, _it'd be King Audric the Mad and King Ferrand the Even Madder_. "I don't know why I'm telling you this. I know what the problem is. I am simply being the most miserable coward that ever was."

"I think you had best explain," said the jester.

*

"There is only one thing to be done," the Fool told him once he had finished. "We must go out, find this castle and finish your story off."

He put his head in his hands. "That was not the answer I hoped for."

"What else can you do? One way or the other, you will be free of these tedious dreams. You will either find that the whole thing is untrue, bring home a bride, or die horribly."

He got to his feet. "Very well, but if I die, my parents will have your head when you return without me."

"I never was very fond of it," he said lightly. "Too much space between the ears and too much nonsense out of the mouth. Still, such is the burden a Fool must bear."

Ferrand glared.

*

"Do you think this could be it?"

The prince was tempted to see if he could push the Fool from his horse. Before them lay a huge circle of thorn trees and somewhere, distant in the centre, was a white castle, with a solitary tower that rose above the rest.

"This is impenetrable," said Ferrand, beginning to cheer up a little. If he had tried and failed, maybe the whole thing would come to a stop?

He climbed down from his horse and moved over to the nearest of the thorn trees. He put a hand to it, seeing if he could perhaps force his way through.

A path opened before him.

"No," said Alain, abusing sarcasm, "I don't think this can be _your_ story."

Ferrand felt his heart sink, but he set off through the newly opened pathway, since there didn't seem to be anything else to be done. And to look on the bright side, it might close up as mysteriously as it had opened and crush him to death.

*

_Sometimes she dreamt she was still out in the forest and those were the best dreams. It had been fun lately, when she'd had him there to tease - because he did like to think himself terribly important at times - and show him around her kingdom, but, figment of her imagination that he was, even he had deserted her._

_What could anyone expect from a girl whose life was as tangled as the name that they gave her?_

*

As he pressed on through, he noticed that the trees seemed to be sprouting out into roses. He stopped to look at the nearest and was hard put not to turn round and go back again. If he hadn't been certain Alain would refuse to let him get away with it, he would have done.

It wasn't merely fairy tales and magic, it was downright sentimentality. What sort of mind came up with thorns turning to roses at his touch?

For the first time, he was glad he hadn't bothered to stay for the midday meal, or he would surely have lost it at this point.

*

At the castle door, he found out. He noticed, with irritation, a faint buzzing and sparkling round his head and he looked up in time to glimpse several tiny fairies circling him.

The door opened.

He had never wanted to do anything less, but what choice did he have?

*

There were people inside. Somehow he hadn't expected that and it made him lose his revulsion at the cloying fairy tale he seemed to have landed in. They were standing around like statues and while they were perfectly intact, barring the odd one or two that had started to crumble, they were unquestionably dead. There was magic and there was magic and nothing could bring any of these back to life.

Yet here they were, frozen in their last act of life: a girl running across the courtyard, the cook about to slap the kitchen boy, even a dog that cracked and turned to dust when he accidentally walked into it.

His fears changed as he gazed up at the still distant tower. Had he been summoned by dreams and fairy magic only to find a dead girl?

*

He entered the castle itself, trying to ignore the people as best as he could. If he stopped to think about it, he might find it was still possible to lose his breakfast. It made him want to kill something.

One of the fairies stopped in front of him and stretched out until she became full sized. He had not seen one so close before. She was beautiful, but uncanny, with large, slanted eyes, flowing robes and he could have sworn he could almost see right through her.

"This way!" she called and led him on through the castle, towards the narrow spiral staircase. The weight around his heart grew heavier the higher he climbed.

*

He approached the beautiful girl, sleeping peacefully on a bed bordered by filmy curtains. Up here there was a different air. Even he could sense the magic and he knew at least that she wasn't dead.

He moved forward. There were more fairies there now, all watching and waiting for him to break the spell.

Ferrand stopped and swallowed. It was ridiculous, because what could be simpler? Kiss the girl, break the spell and live happily ever after.

"I'm sorry," he said to them. "I can't. I just can't do it."

They all froze for a moment and then buzzed around him like large and glittery flies. He wondered about suggesting that he fetch Alain and let him have a go, but the human-sized fairy moved to stand directly before him and met his gaze with hers, giving him a dizzying moment of pain as she saw right into his mind.

"Oh," she said, her catlike eyes widening. "Oh. That is unaccountable!"

More of them materialised fully and the rest fluttered around him as if he were a particularly fascinating animal.

"I'm sorry," he said. "It's only -."

She was laughing. "You prefer her the other way! How is it possible? Her nose is the wrong shape."

A pink fairy shook her head at him. "Her hair is such a dull colour."

"She has these little brown marks all over her face."

"She laughs too much."

He was totally bemused. "How can she have the wrong nose?"

Another fairy pulled back the curtains and let him see that now it was not the princess so perfect she might have been carved out of marble, but the Girl. She was paler than in his dream and so still she might have been dead, but it was unmistakably her.

"Is this a spell?" he asked. The fairy had seen his thoughts and known why he had pulled back. He could not trust them.

They all laughed at him.

"Of course it is a spell," said one. "She has been here for a hundred years!"

He shook his head. "No. Did you make her look like this?"

Amused cries of _no_ came from all around him, so he pulled back the gauzy curtains and knelt to fulfil his destiny.

*

She sat up and stared at him.

Ferrand was grinning like a fool, unable to help it, because she was real, his Girl, and she was alive and it wasn't a dream. Then he recollected that she most likely had no idea who he was, so he hastened to make amends. "My lady, I'm sure this must seem strange to you, but I mean you no harm. My name is Ferrand."

She cut him off by suddenly flinging her arms about him and clinging to him tightly. He let himself smile then. They truly had shared the dreams.

"I'm sorry," she said, eventually releasing him and colouring. "I didn't think you could be real and I thought I would never wake again."

He helped her up and tried to ignore the distracting presence of the fairies, even though he was sure he had caught a trailing rose out of the corner of his eyes. "I don't mind, but I think we should leave here as soon as we can. Explanations can wait."

Then he paused. "You probably should tell me your name, though."

"Briar," she said.

Ferrand offered her his hand. It was a terribly sentimental tale, his story, but he didn't really care.

And he'd at least found out her name before the wedding which was more than his sister Elise had managed.

*

As they headed for the door, the fairies fluttered around Briar and her old blue dress abruptly became a flowing white wedding gown.

She blushed a bright crimson and pulled the headdress away angrily. "I do wish you wouldn't!" she snapped at her fairy godmothers. "That's _not_ helpful."

Ferrand caught at her as an elderly woman dressed in navy robes appeared in front of them.

They were in trouble.

*

"Now, I suppose," said the evil fairy, "I'm going to have to go to the effort of killing you myself. I thought I'd done my work one hundred years ago, but these silly little sprites decided to intervene."

The other fairies had suddenly all become very small again, although they hadn't left. Ferrand put his hand to his sword as Briar fell to her knees. He crouched beside her and shook her, but she had become limp, her eyes unfocused.

"I cursed her at birth," the evil fairy told him. "There is no help for her. What shall your fate be?"

He said, "Anything but a frog."

"She couldn't do that," said Briar with an effort. She sounded drowsy. "She can only manage to curse a defenceless baby. I've heard the others saying. She can't even turn herself into anything, let alone anyone else."

Ferrand had to bite back another smile. Briar had, after all, lived with fairies her whole life. She knew about them - and their vanity.

"I'm not stupid," snapped the fairy. "You want me to transform into something weak and helpless so that you can defeat me. It's been done before and I'm not a fool."

Briar managed to shake her head. "Oh, no. Besides, I still don't believe you could."

He thought, _If she turns me into a frog, at least I won't have to marry this madwoman_.

"Very well," said the fairy and before their eyes, she stretched and became a dragon, only just small enough to fit in the room, all eight foot, twin heads, blue fire and talons of her.

Ferrand drew his sword. "What did you make her do that for?"

After that, he was occupied, dragon-wise.

*

His father could talk about dragon-slaying, but it was clear he had never tried.

She wasn't invulnerable and she was hampered by the small space more than he was, while the other fairies did their best to confuse her and Briar had recovered enough to throw things, (although there was little in the room that hadn't been transformed into flowers of some sort, something that seemed even more unhelpful than ever). And when he did manage to strike a blow, it dripped vile green blood over him.

He dodged out of the way of another burst of flame, backing into Briar.

"Her eyes," she said. "Oh, give me the sword!"

Honestly, as if he was going to do that. He nodded and pulled out his dagger to use in the other hand and managed to strike the dragon. She reared up in pain.

"Chop off the other head!" ordered Briar, who seemed much more awake now.

He managed to do so and showered them all in the green gore. "You'd have got on well with my great-grandfather," he said. "They say `Off with his head' were his first words."

"I _wish_ you'd let me have a try -."

He ignored her and drove the sword into the dragon's heart.

*

Ferrand fell back against the bed and Briar caught at him with an enthusiastic, "Well done!" She helped him up and added, "You should have let me have the sword, though."

"No, I shouldn't," he said, wiping it on the silk bedcovers. He was sure he heard a fairy squeak. "And why did you go and make her do that?"

She was laughing at him, exactly as she had in the dream. "Because she couldn't use her magic that way. And I thought that you might find it harder to kill a fairy than a dragon."

"You -." He fell speechless and stared at her.

She coloured. "I'm sorry. Was I wrong?"

"Am I supposed to marry you or murder you?" he demanded. The worst thing was, she was absolutely right.

Briar smiled at him. "I would have said it was a bit soon for either."

For that, he forgave her the dragon.

*

The castle started to shake around them and the fairies cried out for them to run.

He grabbed Briar by the hand and led her down the stairs, falling against the wall as the tower trembled and swayed.

"Please," she said, "your dagger!"

He was startled, but he passed it to her. She twisted round and cut the train from her inappropriate white dress that was now splattered with bright green dragon`s blood.

"Come on," he said and they raced on through the rapidly disintegrating castle.

*

They finally made it out the other side of the forest, the thorn trees dying and becoming rotten as they passed through.

Alain was still waiting. He surveyed the pair of them, Briar with her torn white dress and Ferrand who was covered in a foul-smelling green liquid. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather have had frogs?"

"No," he said. "And, by the way, this is Briar."

At his words, the castle finally fell in a large cloud of dust. Ferrand swallowed and lost his good humour, suddenly recalling all the people inside and realising what this must mean for Briar. She was staring at its remains.

"I'm sorry," he said fiercely and thought that he might not have had such difficulty in killing a fairy after all.

She turned, startled, and then bit her lip. "Oh, it isn't that. It is sad, of course, but not in the way you imagine. You see, I never even got to meet my parents."

"If only I could say the same," said Ferrand. "And, unfortunately for you, you may have to meet them looking like that. You won't have hysterics, will you?"

She sighed as she looked down at herself. "You know, the worst thing is that this probably is my old blue dress and now I've cut pieces out of it. They don't tend to be very creative, you see. They want to help, but they can't really understand anything about real life."

"Don't worry," said Ferrand. "My mother will be in her element finding you something suitable to wear. In fact, I should imagine they will both be overjoyed to meet you."

She paused. "Are you sure? After all, I'm not at all what a princess should be."

"Yes, you are," he told her. "Fairies are stupid. There's nothing wrong with your nose and I like your hair."

Alain glanced from one to the other. "Is that your idea of romance, sire?"

"Yes," said Ferrand. "Briar, you had better ride with me."

The fool said, "She had better indeed. Neither of you are coming anywhere near me until you've had a wash. What have you been doing?"

"Killing a dragon," said the prince. He laughed to himself at the expression on the fool's face.

*

He took Briar's hand and led her through the throne room to the dais where his parents were waiting for them. Alain walked along behind.

"Blow me down," said the King. "They said you'd returned with a girl, but I didn't believe it."

Ferrand merely bowed.

"And is she a _real_ princess?" asked his mother, more cautious than her husband.

Alain stepped forward. "Madame, she has spent the past hundred years lying under an enchantment in a castle at the centre of a magical forest of thorns. The result of a fairy's curse at birth, I believe."

The king and queen exchanged a satisfied look.

"She can hardly be anything else, then," said the Queen and silently noted that she should cancel the order for the mattresses and put the pea back where it belonged.

***


End file.
